


Swappers

by Charles_Rockafellor



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Alternative Physics, Divergent Timelines, F/M, Human Speciation, Impossible World, Interspecies Romance, Logic of Empire, Quantum twins, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sibling Incest, Sliders - Freeform, fast burn, misheard lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24371953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charles_Rockafellor/pseuds/Charles_Rockafellor
Summary: If you could slide between alternative worlds, but only by swapping places with some sort of "twin" (psychologically or spiritually), then world-hopping would introduce a whole new batch of conundrums.  If the worlds that you could visit weren't restricted to those of standard physics, then the dilemmas faced would be further complicated by the panoply of unbalancing differences.  All of this combined would mean that leaving a place in the middle of an emergency wouldn't be an ethical solution, since it would then simply put your quantum twin into the problem that you sought to leave behind.𝑫𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝑳𝒊𝒌𝒆, 𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑺𝒖𝒃𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒆! ❤️
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Brave New Orwell, Ice Opera, Icewall, Love and romance, Sci-fi





	1. Mysterious ways

We met in a coffee bar. They had alcohol, but that wasn't their focus.

It was an interesting place – this world, I mean, not the bar, though the bar was as interesting as the rest of the world. There was an undergrad giving an impromptu lecture on wavicle fields – he was good. He even hit on VSL and pilot wave hydrodynamics. You know what his intro was? A song. This song was one that I knew, too, but not the way that I knew it. Actually, it was two of them. Here's a snippet of it:

“ _Did you ever take a walk_  
_with a kaon in the rain,_  
_and talk about decays_  
_you can't explain?_

_It's all left,_  
_it's all left,_  
_it's all left..._  
_neutrinos move_  
_in chiral ways._

_Jai guru deva om..._ ”

Not the best grammar, but that could be the local language variant, or slang, or even artistic license. I ignored it; the song was good. The local accent took a moment to adjust to, but that was usually the case in any world. Funny how the languages and dialects themselves don't change all that much between the worlds though – not always a language that I understand, but it's always one that I at least know of.

What if I were to land someplace where the local most-nearly-equivalent is a giraffe? Hell of a surprise for parties at either end of that swap.

What if I were to land in a place with only very slightly different physics? Are there any fail-safes against landing anywhere with greatly different physics? Well, they'd probably worked something out for that. I hope...

The crowd was on the edge of their seats. They were really into his lecture. The décor wasn't all oak and felt though. No, it was lava lamps and glow-in-the-dark tie-dye. After a polite pause once he'd finished, they all snapped instead of clapping.

Told you it's an interesting place.

The woman had been staring at me pretty much throughout the lecture. She wasn't obtrusive about it, it's just that it's the kind of thing that's hard to miss. So was she.

About 5' 9”, maybe 170 pounds, lightly tanned skinned, clear muscle tone, shoulder-length hair that fell in relaxed curls, a runner's ass. Gorgeous hair. She could have been some African-Polynesian blend, I couldn't really tell, but she moved with the poise and self-assuredness of someone who knew their own body well. She could have been a gymnast, but I pegged her as a martial artist.

After the applause, I lifted my Irish coffee toward her. She hadn't realized that I'd noticed her watching me, apparently, given her slight startle at this, but she recouped quickly and joined me with an unaffected nonchalance.

We talked for a bit. She was a little circumspect, but asked some odd questions – not _strange_ -odd, more like _probing-for-something-just-out-of-reach_ -odd.

I liked her. She was interesting and extremely attractive, and I flirted a fair bit with her.

She laughed at something that I'd said. I don't remember what exactly, but she seemed to like it. Then she touched the back of my hand for a moment; she didn't quite flirt back, but didn't really brush me off either. In the end, she told me that I could be her brother's twin.

That was a little awkward.

“My brother's dead, but still...” her eyes lingered on mine before she turned to her wine.

Meanwhile, I knew precisely who her brother is, or was... and where his body is now, at least approximately where: I'm a _swapper_ – I move from one world-pond to another by swapping places with someone over there who's sort of like a quantum twin. The mechanism moves you from world to world, but does so by instantiating a tachyon field in a non-Newtonian fluid treatment of space that upon collapsing swaps you with your nearest equivalent within a given 26-dimensional radius – I think it takes something on the order of 10^(–110) seconds for the whole process to cycle through, even though they'd stressed that what the math said ran counter to something about Planck time. I'm an explorer, not a theoretician, but they crammed me full of information before I left: the swapping process has something to do with psychomorphic resonances.

Still debating with myself as to the wisdom of doing so, I actually told her – and she believed it. Luckily for me, she's into physics and woo-woo stuff – not exactly a surprise, given this world's societal leanings – so she actually understood whatever I'd just told her, and went on to illustrate **1** it for me.

The fact that I basically _am_ sort of her brother, and probably pretty damned identically so, didn't actually dissuade her increasing interest in me.

Different cultures, different mores.

I wasn't really sure of how to handle this – would it be acceptable? Would it be a variety of incest? Certainly her reciprocated interest stirred something unexpected, a possible connection that I hadn't even realized that I'd yearned for on some deep level. In a way, it'd sort of be OK, since it's not as if I actually had a sister at all, but still...

We kept talking as we headed out to an all night sushi-and-taco joint down the block from the bar. She made an allusion to fish tacos that I was almost – but not _quite_ – certain was a double entendre.

She wanted to go with me when I leave. She liked her world, but between the cultural curiosity inherent to everyone there (including her) and the fact that her brother had been the only person in her life, there was nothing keeping her here and everything to gain from exploring. She's a physicist of sorts, but those are a dime a dozen here.

“We can work out the sleeping arrangements by ear,” she said, sipping a milkshake coyly.

**O ~~~ O**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **1** Posit a line segment with a 2-point boundary manifold; if that line segment is vectored, then there's a left-right pull. Now posit a disc with a circle as its boundary manifold; the circle's net pull is either null or bidirectional. Taking that circle as a meniscus within a 2-sphere of a 3-ball, we posit two bodies crossing conjugate points of the hemispheres – their very real presences cast holographically onto the circle from either side then gives the illusion of bosonic action within that circle.


	2. Missed your sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no place like home...

They landed in his home world, seemingly – before he'd left. He recognized some of the headlines on TV as being from a week or two before he'd returned from vacation in Florida, right before having swapped out to that first world only to discover that the return journey wasn't nearly as guaranteed as they'd calculated.

They'd landed in Florida, which made sense, given that he'd been there at the time. They hadn't landed anywhere that he'd been though; they were about two hundred miles off of his original travel path, but that was probably a quantum uncertainty issue. Bound to happen.

They'd made their way to the San Antonio area and were staying in a quiet motel not far from the River Walk. In fact, the motel shared the name, in a stroke of overdone wittiness. In a stroke of luck, his card had swiped for the room without any problems. If his original travel route and purchases were going on even as they themselves were paralleling those, then the system hadn't yet picked up on what would be fraudulent looking usage. Then again, that simply begged the question of paradox: if they'd swapped in, then his original self wasn't actually here anymore, and so couldn't present any problems for his current charges – but then that original self wouldn't arrive back at the facility next week in order to swap out that first time, which might pose a problem. She'd simply shrugged at that and noted that they were here, however that worked out.

Right after checking in, he'd called the lab. They wanted to see him as soon as he got the chance. He was dozing on the bed as she showered, the TV set to a local music channel. His mind wandered and the lyrics sounded funny, as if the Beatles really _had_ sung “ _...the girl with colitis goes by..._ ”. She sang along as she stepped out of the bathroom; she'd forgotten to bring her change of clothes in with her, and so was wearing a large towel in their stead.

“No,” he laughed, “it's ' _...the girl with kaleidoscope eyes..._ '.”

“Maybe here in _your_ world you have lyrics like that, but those are the right words in _my_ world,” she replied.

“Fair enough,” he said, simply glad to be home as she bounced onto the bed and shook some of the water out of her hair and onto him, “I wonder... If I'm home now, then I wonder if the earlier me actually swapped-out when we got here, or if he's still running around. If he never left, then how'd the swap work? And if he did, then shouldn't that present a paradox?”

“For that matter,” she replied, “if we _both_ swapped-in right here, then who swapped-out with me?”

The music channel turned out to play all-time classics of no specific genre or period, just anything that had ever been an enormous hit – within its own time or since. When it paused for a station identification while they talked, it said something funny about their sister station on “PM radio.” As it began playing a piece that began with a very clear and strident line of “ _Gopher tuna, bring more tuna..._ ,” he'd begun a web-TV search on “PM radio,” (he hadn't even known that web-TV still existed, until poking around with the remote control) discovering that it referred to polarization modulation – something that his home Earth hadn't had when he'd left and were hardly liable to have developed in the weeks still leading up to his departure.

On a tangent search, he also found that the songs of his own timeline were mirrored here as if in a fun house: the lyrics were almost right, but off in just such a way that one could mishear them as either. It began adding up – everyone being so much more obsessed with their phones and songs now than he'd remembered, though he'd chalked it up to having been away for so long. Even computers seemed to have become passé relics that were almost sneered upon in this world.

Zipping up her pants, she went to the window, then stepped away rapidly as she threw on her shirt.

“Some white vans just pulled up outside,” she said with a note of concern.

Apparently he'd said something over the phone that had tipped the lab to his not being _their_ “him”.

As men in suits discreetly fanned out across the parking lot, they collected their things and went out by way of the bathroom window.

**O ~~~ O**


	3. Where have all the flowers gone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who needs oxygen, anyway?

Another world, another motel room.

“So, are you up for round three yet?” she asked.

This had been unplanned on their part; it had just sort of happened that very morning for the first time. Her post-coital voice sounded like Natalie Merchant to him.

“Technically, it might qualify as the bottom of round two, but we don't have the time. Checkout's in half an hour, and our replacements won't need that headache on top of finding themselves in a whole new world by surprise.”

“Fine,” she replied accepting the unfortunate logic, “I owe you some seriously mind-blowing head, though. You more than earned it just now... and I know a similar little trick of my own,” she finished, holding up a cupped hand and wriggling her middle three fingers in a come-hither motion.

“Oh, and I should warn you it'll probably bring on your period in a day or two,” he added, then glanced over and saw her gesture.

“You might need some lube for that,” he laughed uneasily.

“I think I can arrange something,” she said as she licked her lips, then smiled and winked, “Where did you learn how to do that, anyway – and _what was_ it?”

She was quite a bit more open-minded than he is, and somewhat actively so, but he'd known that already from conversation. His world had that, too – he'd been on a date with one chick who'd liked hot wax, and for a little while he'd dated another who'd been into BDSM (or at least she'd claimed to be; he'd never seen her show any such tendency beyond the attention that saying so might garner) – it just hadn't been almost everyone, which seemed to be the case in her world, by her account. Their worlds were definitely different in a lot of ways.

He chuckled.

“I'm not exactly a virgin. You know the G-spot? I could make an RNA-DNA joke about the A-, T-, and U-spots, but the C-spot's the real tsunami-button, right at your cervix,” he grinned and winked back.

“And your impression of Spock there certainly moved matters along...” she added, shifting her ass cheeks around on the pillow.

They checked out and headed out for breakfast at the adjacent diner.

 _Weird world: broiled maple-sausages with mustard-salmon_ , he reflected. At least their bellies would be full; first a good night's rest, then this morning's activities, and now they'd even get to eat before leaving – which reminded him to make sure that they hit the bathroom before activating the unit and seeing what the next world-pond had in store for them.

The gas station attendant was friendly, and more than willing to strike up conversation. There hadn't been much business of late. “First the frogs died, then the bees. Now all the free oxygen is binding up everywhere. How come you folks don't know all this already?”

“We're from Canada,” he said, hoping that this would suffice.

“ _Canada_. Is _that_ in _Texas_?” the attendant's drawl exaggerated the syllables.

“A bit more north,” she interjected.

They tried to find out more at a library, since asking around would make people wonder. Maybe the frogs' extinction meant industrial toxins and deadly fungi everywhere, or the bees' extinction came from radio and Wi-Fi pollution. Maybe this world's oxygen cycle was more plant-based than algal, or there was some sort of chelation and subduction problem. They could think of any number of possibilities, and combed through just as many more. Whatever was driving the issue, they couldn't leave: that would be a death sentence for their in-swapping semi-twins.

It turned out that this world-pond had suffered several increasingly bad years.

The frogs' disappearance went mourned by ecologists and such, but saw only passing remarks in newspapers and blogs. The articles on the frogs were only space filler, beyond those in which their loss was bemoaned by foodies.

Later analyses showed the diverse effects that this had, rippling through the species that they ate and fed. Many insects saw a boom in their presence – mosquitoes, most notably – some faded quietly into obscurity. Some stream beds bloomed thick with algae, now that there were no more tadpoles eating it, others saw it peter out, buried in sediment. By then, people were too busy with crop problems and insect infestations to think about the frogs anymore. They were also fighting a mosquito population and a rise of associated diseases.

After the bees were all gone, a lot of crops suffered extinction, or nearly so. Honey was obviously no longer on the menu. Other less obvious goods included blueberries, cherries, cotton, apples, coffee, peaches, plums, alfalfa, almonds, avocados, walnuts, peppers, grapes, sunflowers; the list went on and on. This led to others species dying back, since they'd been dependent on those. Cows, bee-eater birds. The alfalfa and almonds (due to their hulls having been a food source for the cows) meant that dairy wasn't very viable anymore, hence the price of beef and dairy in general having skyrocketed. Pigs and chickens were doing well enough, but still... Some plants, such as corn and wheat, were still getting by through other pollinating insects or by wind, though often suffering reduced populations.

One good thing had come of it: several corporations had ceased research into suicide-genes being tailored into crop seeds.

Now the oxygen was disappearing – though it turned out to be depleting less rapidly in southern continents, and refugees were flocking to South America, Africa, and Australia, which was earning them second-class status and turning the term “shellback” into a derogatory reference throughout nations south of the equator.

Others simply headed to the southern oceans on sprawling raft-cities from tankers and such, hoping to eke out a community living, thus remaining relatively independent and self-sustaining. Sea life still remained, and wind was always present.

Some rich, desperate, and hardy souls were even taking to the shores of Antarctica in hope of longer lives through its retaining the highest oxygen levels of any place on record. These often had advisory boards at their disposal, advisory boards that recalled Admiral Byrd's 1954 interview, and so brought with them the means to exploit and maintain their own control of coal, oil, uranium, minerals, and other natural resources buried within the interior. The international treaty of 1959 apparently no longer applied to such magnates.

They had time to decide what to do. The air wasn't running out any time soon.

Maybe that was worse though: they, along with everyone else in this world-pond, had time to contemplate their slow demise.

It was during one of those dull moments, staring into space and wondering about what came next, that it hit him: there was air out on The Ice and above the world-pond. What kept it fresh he didn't know, but surely it would exchange with this world-pond's air, refreshing some oxygen content. The people here should actually be alright over time, as long as the ecology survived the upcoming cascade of species extinctions, “just” a definite dip in oxygen content until this world-pond's atmosphere could settle into a new convective exchange equilibrium.

They didn't have the numbers to work with, but she felt confident that his reasoning was sound. Just what percentage the place might level off at she couldn't be sure, beyond that it would surely be less than its normal 21%, but should lie somewhere safely and comfortably above 15%, given the algal scrubbing as a starting point.

Heaving a sigh of relief, they gathered their gear.

It was ethically unobjectionable for them to leave now.

**O ~~~ O**


	4. Chasing Waterfalls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if you dug through your big blue marble, only to fall out of the other end of the hole? "Down" can be a long way down indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a better idea of where this episode takes place, see the Icewall map at the URL below; you're looking for "The Pearl", just northwest of the Galactic Disc world-pond.  
> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kWgi_k1artGUfK8JaA2gpw3CLGNI1DU8/view?usp=sharing>

Standing like a blue-gray pearl capping a ring, only within rather than without, shining dully beneath a cool and watery cloud that orbited it and served as its sun, a world stood unlike any nearby. Unlike so many other world-ponds that lay flat to The Ice, or towered above it as vast mesas, or even floated above it in some rare cases, this world was a globe. Seas decorated its top, lakes dotting the gentle slopes all around them, with rivers and streams pouring outward, rapids leading to falls that flew into the depths beneath the equator.

The nighttime view, if unobscured, was magnificent. This world had no strong magnetic field of its own, and so there was only the general north to one end of the equator and the general south to the other. Their compasses swung in steradians, rather than degrees. The crescent that could be seen of the Ringwall **1** throughout the southeastern octant of the world was a slow and steady procession of darkness and light proceeding forever clockwise from the north; far below the world, spread out as diamonds on black velvet, the stars twinkled in their dim glories of blue and brown; far to the northwest one could just make out Axis Mundi **2** reaching into the sky, dwindling into infinity; anywhere in the entire southern quadrant one could see the beautiful and enigmatic spiral nebula **3** caught in its own light shining forever upward, mirroring the dark beauty of Tenebras Mundi **4** to the north-northeast.

Likewise holding no self-gravitation, what clung to it was there by right of absolute down, the universal norm of The Ice. A ball that's thousands of miles wide is a ball that's thousands of miles tall. A body wants to be careful anywhere near that edge – it's a long way down – and things could be bad if anyone were to drill too deep.

They landed in a quiet area, just inside of an alleyway that let out onto a small street.

“It's kind of a shame that we have to swap with our counterparts every time,” she observed “having two of you around could be fun.”

“Just remember that it could just as easily be two of you,” he retorted.

“That could be fun too,” she grinned mischievously.

That captivated his imagination for a moment. He hadn't actually given it serious thought at all, and here she'd surprised him yet again.

As they rounded the corner in search of lodging, food, and information, not necessarily in that order, a fairly small protest came into view a few blocks distant. Emotionally charged situations had a way of turning dangerous in the span of seconds, but usually shed light on the most pressing local situation.

That was the direction that they chose.

It wasn't terribly loud once they reached it, but they didn't need to ask revealing questions either. A man was handing out pamphlets to anyone who walked by, and the placards were concise: “ _No more drilling!_ ”, “ _ **Bore = DEATH**_ ,” and “ _DON'T pull the plug!!! _”

“I'm tellin' ya, these big corporations won't be happy 'til we're all dead and they have all the money!” the bearded man said in disgust, “But will anyone listen? I've been saying this for years, I'm even on their watch-lists, and nobody does a thing about it.”

They exchanged a look.

“What's going on?” she asked carefully.

“They're finally about to start drilling even deeper,” the man said from behind his beard, “and if they do, they'll hit bottom soon enough, and kill us all.”

“How?”

He shook his head, “Don't you pay attention? All the water will drain out and fall off, and once it's gone, it's gone!”

His shoulders sank at them, seeing that they were just another set of deaf ears, as he stomped off in search of more people to harangue and force pamphlets onto.

“OK, I guess we've landed in tinfoil-hat world.”

She nodded slightly, agreeing with him, then asked “But what if there's something to it?”

They read through the pamphlets as they sat in their diner booth awaiting their orders. Some of the money that they still had from a previous world-pond was similar enough to the stuff here that it should pass muster at a casual glance.

“It says here that the company claims to be seeking minerals, geothermal power, and scientific research, but that their true goal is to reach the bottom of the world. What do you make of that?”

“The bottom of the world?” she asked, “Weird wording.”

A kindly looking slightly elderly gentleman at a small table nearby turned to them.

“I know it sounds crazy,” he began, “but it's not. I don't know if that's what they're after or not, but in principle it's possible. It would only take a long time and a lot of work, depending on where you start and where you hope to end.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He thought for a moment, then made as if to join them. They nodded acquiescence.

“Well” he began, taking out a pen and reaching for a napkin, “if the world really is resting on the universal firma mater as modern science currently postulates, then it's only a matter of distance.”

He began sketching a circle, a tangent plane, and some equations.

“Any given point on the globe is only so far from any other, and a chord is just a question of its angle and its sagitta, assuming no specific shape,” he explained as he drew lines through the disc from the base to different points along the circle.

“High school math teacher – retired, but the habits are still there,” he said apologetically, “If you have a ball of a given radius – say, four thousand miles – then it's just a question of time and effort to reach any other point. You might walk along the surface for some of these,” here he added a dotted line across the top of the circle, “or you could cut across like a worm through an apple,” here he added a pair of lines between those same two points, “but nothing stops you from going downward instead.”

As he added a second disc with its own lines, these being all vertical, they exchanged a look.

“Downward?” he asked the older man.

“Sure,” the gentleman said, “it's as good as sideways, just in a different direction.

“Now,” he went on, “if you go straight down in most places, you end up falling out the bottom, but if you do that at the pole, then you never reach the bottom – you just keep going down and into firma mater, if that's possible.

“But those aren't the only options. You _could_ dig along a slope, spiraling or switching back as needed, and end up at the ground floor without much risk of falling out the bottom or anything.”

He beamed as he presented them with a third disc, this one showing only a drilling installation at the top, some zig-zags downward through the disc, and some stick figures cheering as they exited to the tangent line and popped a bottle of champagne.

“What about gravity?” he asked the man.

“What about it?”

“Wouldn't the sides of the ball fall off?” she supplied for him.

“In a two-dimensional disc, sure, but this is just a representation of a ball in three dimensions,” he replied.

“No,” she said, “I mean, wouldn't a ball that size crumble and fall apart? What would hold the edges up against the gravitational pull of the plane?”

“Geometry is one thing, but I'm not a geological physicist, so I can't speak to the strength of materials or the relevant stressors. I _can_ say that your pamphlet's right though, or at least partly: it would certainly drain out any body of water that it went through, if that tunnel were to go all the way through to open air at the other end. It might do worse, too.”

“Worse?” he asked.

“Sure. Picture a tunnel full of air a couple thousand miles deep. Now imagine the temperature differential and what that might do to the weather. It's cold down there.”

“Not to mention the pressure differential,” she observed thoughtfully.

“Normally, yes, but that wouldn't apply here,” said the old man.

“Why not?”

“Just not how the world works,” he smiled offhandedly.

By this time, their eggs and Danishes arrived. Again, a world with some weird ideas about which foods belonged together. At least it went with their weird ideas of how their own world worked.

After the gentleman left, they sat there discussing things.

Even if this world were somehow a globe, surely they had options that they could explore – four thousand miles of rope might be a little impractical, not to mention untenable, but flight might be on the horizon. Then they considered what they had seen so far; some of the heavy machinery was late industrial, though the electrical systems were extremely primitive. Perhaps gliding or parachuting were more realistic expectations here, but those would leave any surviving explorer stranded below. A hot air balloon seemed the best suggestion, though if such didn't already exist here, then they'd have to work out some way of introducing it to the discussion – assuming that they had the right to interfere.

Interesting place, if a bit crazy. Luckily the drilling plans didn't look as if they were very deep, or likely to proceed at all quickly, and certainly weren't set smack in the middle of any oceans.

Time enough to explore a bit, since it presumably held interesting people and things, take in the local sights and culture, maybe pick up anything portable that seemed useful **5** , and then swap-out to the next world.

**O ~~~ O**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **1** Ringwall: their name for the Ringworld of “[Tornado insurance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369001)”.
> 
> **2** Axis Mundi: their name for Yggdrasil, detailed in the Icewall document and referred to in “Tornado insurance”. For "Icewall", please see <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BG7P_sVezz8Dn5b8js_34yeAjSBhfN0v>
> 
> **3** The spiral nebula: the Galactic Disc world-pond, to be gone into in greater detail in “[Radiation leak](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24373297)”, “Valley of Ice”, and “Ironing out details” (and arguably referred to obliquely in “Superocean”). The first of these short stories is linked, the next three are still WIPs.
> 
> **4** Tenebras Mundi: their name for the vast region of the entropy engines (referred to in the Icewall document; URL above in note #2).
> 
> **5** Presumably at least one compass: this world seems likely to have something to tell elevation and ground angle built into their Ice-absolute-north compasses.


	5. Ice Orcs!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> History of the world, part aleph null: Space Orcs -- on ice!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the jumping between world-ponds might earn "Swappers" a place in the "Ice Opera" collection, this particular chapter is what nails it. Our favorite mystery couple isn't alone, running around out there on The Ice.

Paradise Island. Beautiful lagoons everywhere, cornūcōpiae-plants that bore everything at once – fruit, vegetables, tubers, nuts, berries... even meat. Wonderful, friendly, helpful people; a society that traded-forward freely from one island to the next; a world-spanning archipelago that kept the weather perfect all year 'round.

But no medical practice. They'd pushed their luck and stayed for a month, and extended that for a second month, but left for fear of likely eventualities.

They'd landed in a wooded area near a signposted fork in the dirt road and hiked into town.

“The Palatinacy of Orchamshire: bringing the light and the glory of Human civilization to benighted species everywhere,” the sign had proclaimed in large font, then gone on about local sites and goods.

It was a strange mixture of old masonry, simple timber and wattle, gas lamps, static-riddled radios, and seemingly magic-cantripped mechanisms.

They'd ordered ham and eggs at a corner shop. At least you couldn't screw up ham and eggs much. She'd even introduced him to eggs with grape jelly, and although it had been an odd combination, he couldn't say that it had been a bad experience.

“Ma'am? The ham is kind of... _green_.”

The waitress smiled and replied, “It's orcham. Welcome to greater Orchamshire.”

He looked a little green himself, as he glanced up from his plate.

“Orkum?”

The waitress heaved a small sigh.

“Orcham. Orc-HAM. As in Orcs?” she paused, “You're not sympathizers, are you?”

Their blank looks spoke volumes.

“ _Mel!_ ” she called over her shoulder, “ _I'm takin' a break!_

“My feet are killin' me, anyway,” she confessed as she shrugged and pulled up a chair at their table, “I'm Flo.”

The diner was deserted, and so her action caused no stir. They were the only ones there.

“You're from some new Protectorate World, aren't you?” Flo asked.

“Ear-rth...?”

“Ehrruth?” Flo repeated, “Yup, new to me. Been here long?”

“We just got here,” she said.

“This isn't Orchamshire itself, as you might guess from the sky not iridescing, but this world's been an outer parish of the Palatinacy for over a century,” she explained proudly, “Orcs are those abominations you see outside, one of those _zek-species_ ,” her body and voice making clear her disgust at any of their ilk, “Elves, Dwarves, and so forth. Didn't anyone teach you this before just letting you come here?”

They didn't get a chance to consider this as she plowed on.

“It's ancient history, but Orchamshire declared holy war on all of the zeks way back when, and orcham is one of the results – try it, you'll love it. It's made from pure Orc, no grain or anything added.”

She didn't seem to notice their growing concern.

“Look, you kids seem like a really sweet couple, so here's some free advice: don't ask questions, especially not about _that_ ,” she lifted her eyes pointedly at their plates, “and _especially_ not around the clergy – and be sure to get to church before they come asking where you are.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Could I get a chicken salad sandwich instead?” he asked, then rethought that as he considered their meat selection, “Wait, maybe just a salad and some toast?”

“Me too!” she chimed in.

Flo shook her head in resignation, “Sure, why not. It's about to be my lunch-break anyway,” she said, bringing their plates to the employees' table before heading back to the counter to replace their orders.

The music playing from the speakers as she did so was odd, like expecting smooth jazz and getting staccato baroque, but it was too tinny for either of them to make out as anything more than a relief against the heavy silence.

Before leaving, they asked Flo if there were a library nearby.

“Oh, you mean the _librārium_! Just down Main Street,” she said as she pointed, “You can't miss it – it's inside the church.”

Within the church they found the librārium section. It wasn't lined with bookcases, but rather was a set of halls. Lithographs and sketches lined the walls; depictions of various protectorates and the battles fought for their liberation.

As they walked, music filtered through quietly from all about, tickling the ear gently.

“I know this piece,” he said, “It's Dies Irae, but I've never heard it like this – this is Ionian, in B and played allegro, with some kind of andante counterpoint in A.”

“Dies Irae?” she asked.

She recognized it once he'd hummed the version that he knew.

“That was playing at the bookstore!”

“We need to leave” he said.

“As if our swappees would want to be here either?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he replied, “some maybe, some not. It's a coin toss.”

“Nobody from my world,” she observed with a shiver.

“Yeah, but one man's mead is another man's poison.”

“True,” she conceded, “it's a statistical spread across the worlds...”

A guide had stepped over as they stopped at one picture that was unfinished.

The plaque read that the brave artist had been cut down savagely by one of that world's unreasoning barbarians. The Humans were cast in tones of rose with tulip-colored light from above, the others in grays with an eerie blue lighting from beneath.

There were artistically located splotches of what could be blood in the corner.

The guide explained the history of the piece, adding little to the summary already there, but asking them to wait for a moment as he called in the curator who was nearby and could surely expand on this.

Once he'd reached the end of the hall, they made their way in the other direction, then around the corner.

Continuing past some potted palms, they stopped before reaching a marble pool. Voices were in heated discussion over lay people who'd been overheard using the liturgical language of music.

They turned again, this time slipping into a gift shop toward the end of the main floor.

Moving rapidly, they continued through to the exit, stepping out into the Abbey Garden.

Wending their way along increasingly disused paths through sweat peas and lilacs, bee balm and mock orange, the found themselves before an ivy-covered rusty gate.

Here, they let themselves out, then continued along the quiet stream beneath the abutting city park's overhanging willows and yews, steering wide of the swans that kept casting them suspicious looks.

She shifted uneasily, glancing over her shoulders.

Speaking so quietly that he could barely hear her, she mumbled “I don't know about these guys, but I'm six percent Denisovan and four Neanderthal. And I never actually researched it, but I think that there's probably some Cro Magnon in there maybe five or six generations back, so maybe two-ish percent.”

“What?” he stuttered, breaking stride, but not quite stopping.

“I know – that's why I'm worried.”

“No,” he replied, “I just had no idea.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“Your background.”

“I'm human,” he said before realizing how this sounded, “–I mean, just Homo Sapiens, nothing else.”

Her eyes clouded at this.

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah, it's just that I never thought about it.”

He looked her over now, noticing the slight differences that had registered only subliminally before.

A slightly longer skull, very slightly shorter limbs, the somewhat pale hair and caramel skin combination...

“In my world, it's just us,” he finished quietly.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged, “I guess the others just died off or interbred with us.”

She thought about that as they walked.

“What does this mean for us?” she asked, her voice taking a brittle edge to it.

“I don't know,” he admitted, “but I'd like to find out, if it's still OK.”

She smiled and reached over to hold his hand.

“I think that could be arranged,” she said, leaning in and kissing his cheek.

**O ~~~ O**


	6. Cy₿erdigm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can't buy, sell, or trade, without the chip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the episode that got "Swappers" a place in the "Brave New Orwell" collection.

The bag-lady stood atop a plastic crate at the corner of the street, the crate's contents indiscernible.

They caught snippets of an opening about not having a ₿east-chip and some bytecoins, and then some unincorporated lands as they approached. The wind snatched away the first few words of her actual schtick, but they soon picked up on the reasoning.

“–and if the whole world was covered in ice, then where'd the water come from in the first place, and where'd it go when it melted? Don't tell me the ocean, 'cause that's just pouring one cup of water into another empty cup in order to get two cups of water! Don't tell me the atmosphere, 'cause all the atmospheric water vapor in the world would only make an inch or two deep of a puddle! And don't even try saying that it's in the biomass, because that's only partly water, and the world certainly isn't covered in thousands of meters of biomass anyway!”

A poster plastered to the wall behind her read “ _Not recycling is **carbon theft**! _”

“Don't have a mark? No problem, they say – you can't buy, sell, or trade, but just go to a charity, where they'll write off the food as a resource-loss come tax time... though you'll still have to work for their time and space right down to the last millicalorie, to include their calculating that balance. And it won't stop there, oh no,” she snorted a few sharp noises, a strange outward-snoring sound that seemed to replace a laugh, but as if she'd never actually heard one as an example, “it'll just seesaw with individual calorie chit imbalance in either direction, you owe or are owed, and it's practically impossible to zero-out and leave.”

At this, she shook her head and wound down, climbing off of her makeshift soapbox. The entertainment over, the crowd tossed bites of food into her hat.

Picking up her hat and shouldering her crate, she looked them over.

“Atavists on Raumspringer, eh? Yeah, well, the system permits atavists _out there_ because it's easier than trying to keep degenerates _in here_ , and they can always opt-in later. But free advice,” she snort-laughed again, “go home to your tents, or caves, or wherever. Now. The shuttle – that horseless cart with no wheels – is free,” snort-laugh, “I'm stuck, you're not. Yet.”

She hurried away from the spot then, mentioning a ten-minute loitering law.

As they walked with her, they looked around, absorbing the atmosphere. There were transgenics everywhere, cybergear. So, a fairly open culture that embraced forward thinking and diversity; that was a good thing, right?

Real and deep fake celebrity endorsements. Could be good, could be bad; at least their economy might not be stagnant.

The bag-lady went on about something called a soul lotto. If you won, then you acquired an increased social influence, which meant a better life, and more influence.

“I still own sixty five percent of mine!” she finished.

In the crowds that thronged the streets were some unearthly beauties, some androgynous hermaphrodites, some living marble statues. Children riding small wyverns. Both corporate and counterculture types sporting angelic bearing and radiant presence, coruscating with colors across so many palettes – pastel, metallic, pearl – their bodies neither always visible nor always visibly the same.

“Most are human, or mostly so. Bots are supposed to be AI, Xenorgs are supposedly life from other amino chemistry, but you hear rumors of demonic essences in either of 'em. Could be none of these, no more advanced or evil than an automatic door. The Giants... they're supposed to be from lost tribes hidden in the far corners of the world, if you can believe _that_.”

Flying houses, cloud-like buildings.

“ _Complimentary coffee with every transfusion!_ ” announced a holo-vert, “ _Would you like a free sample?_ ”

“Shuttle station sucks; you can stay in the sewer with me if you want, but don't accept anything from _them_.”

Everywhere around, they began to realize that it was always the same logo: ☼ | ●, and always the repeated phrase in greeting, in parting, in business and casual reference... “ _Omnia, ab unum_.”

A pizzeria's heavenly scents washed over them.

“You don't want to go in there.” the bag-lady informed them.

“What's wrong with the pizza?”

“Probably nothing – it's their entertainment that might not be to your liking. And _don't_ eat the _meat_. Anywhere.

“Yeah... that bus out isn't anything like as nice as the one that brought you in by the scenic route. Good tread, en route... _movies_ ,” she snorted at remembering the right word, “catered snacks, cushions, climate control, friendly hostesses. A lot come back again. Fall in love with the world. Forever.”

They chose to spend the evening talking with the bag-lady before heading to the shuttle station the first thing in the morning.

**O ~~~ O**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do have two further "Swappers" WIPs (so far), but I also have a backlog of stories to finish. ;-)


End file.
